Celebrities for Israel: Bill Maher Leads the Way

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Written by By Hannah Hayes

Created: July 23, 2014

On Bill Maher’s HBO Show “Real Time” on Friday July 18th, he made his opinion on the Israel-Gaza conflict abundantly clear.

Daily Caller senior editor Jamie Weinstein along with former Democratic Rep. Jane Harmon and Nate Silver were all guests on that nights show. Maher shocked liberals when he whole heartily agreed with Weinstein that the conflict in Gaza is the fault of Hamas.

“I feel terrible for a Palestinian child who dies,” Maher said. “But if it’s your father, your brother, your uncle who’s firing those rockets into Israel, whose fault is it really? Do you really expect the Israelis not to retaliate?”

Weinstein said, “I don’t think you can understand the conflict without reading Hamas’ charter, upon which they were founded, which clearly calls — and it’s chilling — calls for not only the destruction of Israel but the murder of Jews generally. They say the day will come when the trees will call out and say ‘here’s a Jew come kill him.’ This is the mentality of the people that Israel is fighting.”

Maher commented that Israel’s effective defense may be credited to their scientific ingenuity. “Jews have, I think, 155 Nobel Prizes. Muslims have two,” he said. “That seems like kind of a big advantage for team Hebrew.”

Earlier last week before Friday’s show, Maher got himself into trouble with some feminist after sending out a tweet about the conflict. He wrote, “Dealing w/ Hamas is like dealing w/ a crazy woman who’s trying to kill u - u can only hold her wrists so long before you have to slap her.”

Other celebrities have been joining in expressing their support for Israel, and have come under heavy criticism for it. Three graduates from Rutgers having been using Facebook to stir up support for celebrities who are pro Israel. They are the creators of the “I Support Scarlett Johansson Against the Haters” Facebook campaign. The campaign urged followers to support Johansson’s endorsement deal with the Israeli-based SodaStream Company.

Similar campaigns have now been launched for other entertainers, including Justin Timberlake and Neil Young, who have become targets of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement after scheduling concerts in Israel. Anti-Israel activists criticized Timberlake after he posted an Instagram photo of himself praying at the Western Wall. The picture received more than 254,000 “likes,” but Timberlake’s use of the Twitter hash tag “#Israel” earned criticism from BDS supporters.

The beautiful model Bar Refaeli showed support through online media. On Instagram with the hashtag #stopterror and a photo of her on the beach, Refaeli posted, “There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war, except its ending -Abraham Lincoln.” Though the quote was actually from an episode of Star Trek and not the actually President Lincoln, her heart was in the right place.

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